


Hail the new lads and lasses

by sloganeer



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, Christmas, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloganeer/pseuds/sloganeer
Summary: "This is my art studio, Mr. Brewer. I think it's best if we keep meetings about this Sunday's craft fair to a neutral space.""I'd love that, Mr. Rose." He tilts his head in a way David distrusts. And that tone. "Except you refuse to step foot in the teacher's lounge.""OK, but that place always smells like cheese!"
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Theodore "Ted" Mullens/Alexis Rose
Comments: 53
Kudos: 128
Collections: Schitt's Creek Open Fic Night 2.0





	Hail the new lads and lasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingscatt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingscatt/gifts).



"Mr. Rose?"

He looks up from Janie's sewing machine, bobbin tangled up again, to see Theresa standing at her easel and pointing towards the door. 

"Mr. Brewer is lingering outside. He keeps peeking through the window." 

David says, "Ignore him," and shoos the class back to their work. "If we all ignore him, maybe he'll go away and stop bothering me with his endless checklists."

"Do you have a secret admirer, Mr. Rose?" Kris asks. He's at the sink with his sleeves rolled up, the first step of the tie dye assembly line. Maybe David can ask Hank to move the drying rack to cover up the windows.

"Not exactly secret," Theresa says.

"Back to work," David snaps. "The craft fair is this Sunday, and you won't make any money if there's nothing on your tables."

It takes him another ten minutes to get the sewing machine running again. "Janie?" he says, standing up and holding the chair for her to sit. "Go slowly."

"Everyone else? Keep working. I'm going to step outside for a minute, and I don't want to see any curious faces in that window."

There's laughing coming from the sink, but David ignores it. He sticks his glasses into his back pocket and runs a hand through his hair. Mr. Brewer is still in the hallway, waiting, impatient, when David opens the door.

"Hi, what is this? What are you doing?"

"This is my prep hour," Patrick says. He holds up that leather portfolio David never sees him without. "I thought maybe I could come in and check on your class."

With a step back against the door, David crosses his arms over his chest. "You think they won't be done."

Patrick's eyes go wide with embarrassment. "No, no, of course not."

"What's in the portfolio, Mr. Brewer?"

He stuffs it behind his back. "Lists, nothing, don't worry."

"You want to go in there." David points. He sees a cluster of heads turn away from the window. "You want to stand over those kids like they're on your assembly line and make little disapproving noises in the back of your throat and take condescending notes like there's a formula to art that just needs some tweaking."

"Well, no," Patrick says. "I don't want to do that." 

"This is my art studio, Mr. Brewer. I think it's best if we keep meetings about this Sunday's craft fair to a neutral space."

"I'd love that, Mr. Rose." He tilts his head in a way David distrusts. And that tone. "Except you refuse to step foot in the teacher's lounge." 

"OK, but that place always smells like cheese!" David watches Patrick's eyes light up with a retort on his tongue. "And not the expensive kind."

*

Patrick is crouched under the table, unplugging his laptop, when the lounge door opens and David enters. The noise of students between classes fills the room behind him before they're locked up together in the silence.

Scrambling to his feet, Patrick gets tangled up in his cords and has to grab hold of the table to keep himself upright.

"Mr. Rose!"

"Don't stand on my account, Mr. Brewer," David says. He has his satchel hanging over one arm. "I'm only in here to wash my mug. The kids have occupied every sink in my studio." 

"I'm glad to catch you before my class," Patrick says. "What do you say to a meeting at the Café tonight, one last run through the timeline for Sunday." 

He watches David at the sink, his broad back covered in sequins, water cascading over those hands, golden rings reflecting back the overhead fluorescent lights. 

"It would put my mind at ease," Patrick continues. It's the tiniest of manipulations, but David is the teacher supervisor of the SCHS Mental Wellness Club, and Patrick knows he has the man's attention. "Dinner is on me." Another Rose-proof tactic.

David turns and leans back against the counter. Patrick steps forward, towel in hand. He tries, but David doesn't let their fingers touch. 

"That sounds amenable," he says, tossing the towel back at Patrick, catching him across the face, then leaving the lounge as gracefully as he entered. Patrick waits until the vibrations have left his body, then gathers himself to face his grade elevens.

*

"He's a weirdo," David tells her. Stevie dunks a pita and drags the container of hummus closer. "He was loitering outside my studio today."

"Loitering," Stevie says. She stares at him. David can't stop staring back at the spot of hummus at the corner of her lip, until she catches it with her tongue. "You're sure he wasn't just being polite and waiting until your class was finished to ask a question?"

David pretends to think about it. He doesn't know why he tries confiding in Stevie. She never takes his side.

"Sorry we're late!" Ted announces. He's pulling Alexis along, her eyes warily searching the classroom, plastic takeout bag of sushi in hand. 

"You're forgiven if there's a bottle of sake in there," David tells them.

"Oh my god, David, I'd never carry sake in plastic." She sets everything on the table while Ted drags a couple of chairs across the floor. "It's in my purse, of course."

Alexis sits long enough to eat half a kappa roll, but then she's on her feet again, leaving the hard plastic chair behind and flitting around the room. David scarfs the last of his sandwich and follows close behind. He can never predict the kind of damage Alexis can do when left to herself.

"Did your students make these cute little bags?" she asks.

"No touching," David says, bumping her away from the racks. "You can buy them on Sunday."

"Oh, at the craft fair Patrick organised?" 

Behind them, David hears Stevie mutter, "uh oh."

He takes a deep breath. "Patrick told you he organised it?"

"I saw him the other day," Alexis says, so casual, her hands floating through the air while David tries to keep up. "He was up to his nose in checklists, poor thing, so and I sat down to offer my expertise."

"Patrick told you he organised the craft fair?" David asks again.

"Why?" She tilts her head in his direction. "Is it important?"

David walks back to the table. Stevie holds up the bottle and pours him more sake.

*

Patrick nearly clips Ronnie's truck as he turns into the last empty parking spot, nearly forgets to lock his door as he races inside, long minutes past time.

"I ordered a boozy milkshake to kill the time I was here all by myself, and you're not allowed to have any of it."

David puts his mouth on the straw and sucks his cheeks in, big brown eyes glaring at Patrick across the table.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Maya needed to talk to me about a reference letter, and you know I can't say no to those kids." He climbs up on his knees in the booth beside David, grabbing his face and pulling him in for a kiss. He feels the tension fall away from David's jaw and tastes the caramel on his tongue.

"All right," David says. He pushes him away with his hand tight on Patrick's shoulders, but he also pecks a number of kisses across Patrick's face. "Go sit over there, Mr. Brewer. I'm not done being mad at you yet."

"Oh, c'mon, David." But Patrick sits, a hand in the air to ask Twyla for some tea. "Look." He opens his palms upwards on the table. "No checklists. No red pens."

David shakes his head, tongue reaching for the straw. 

"Tonight, I'm all husband, no colleague," Patrick says.

"It's a start," David concedes.

They never meant to keep their relationship a secret at school. In fact, when Dr. Schitt interviewed them together, she asked outright whether they planned to tell the faculty and students. David thought any kind of formal announcement would be tacky. He preferred people discover the truth organically, which to Patrick sounded like David wanted to be caught making out in the supply closet.

Stevie knew, because she was already on staff and had been the one to tell them about the openings, and Ted, because he was married to David's sister. Patrick figured, between the two of them, the whole school would know before Thanksgiving break.

But it didn't happen that way. And when David decided on-campus PDA was forbidden, it didn't happen accidentally in the supply closet either. It kept not happening, and now, three years later, they were Mr. Brewer, who taught business and accounting, and Mr. Rose, who taught art and sewing, and the way David flinched when Patrick got too close in the hallway, most of their students assumed they hated each other.

"You still have to order your own milkshake," David says, one arm wrapped around his glass. 

Patrick takes his seat across the table. He's happy just to watch his husband suck on that straw.

*

Sunday morning is a slow battle to see who can be ready to leave first. David sneaks out of bed to take the first shower. Patrick packs breakfast to go. They fight over the car keys until Patrick gives in and lets David drive to school. A quick kiss in the front seat is the last chance they have to connect before the chaos of the day takes over.

David's fashion and design students organise the tables, moving them to create aisles and corral the customers for maximum exposure. Then they're covered with plain white cloths to highlight the merchandise for sale. David sends a couple of kids to scout for more green chairs so that everything matches. 

Patrick's accounting and business leadership students are running the door and the coffee bar. In those frantic moments before they open their doors to the public, David is drawn to the back corner, where the smell of dark roast and caramel has started to fill the air. Perched on top the ancient coffee urn is a stuffed animal wearing a red scarf embroidered with the words "fa la llama."

"Morning," David says.

The kids are far too perky this early in the day. "Good morning, Mr. Rose," they answer, in unison. 

"What's this?" he asks, pointing at the anomaly in his decor plan.

"Isn't it cute?" Tasha says. "My mom found it at the outlet mall."

He nods. He feels his eyes scrunch up, and he can't stop nodding because then he'll have to tell this poor girl 'no.' "And why is it here?" he asks. "I'm worried this could be a fire hazard. You never know just what kind of material these things are made of."

"Oh," she says. "I suppose you're right."

David takes this opportunity to snatch the llama from its spot, attached only with a few twist ties, and he passes it to Tasha. "Best to keep it away from the food, too."

"Yeah." She holds the thing in her lap.

"Mr. Brewer said it was OK," the other kid says. David doesn't know their name. 

"Mr. Brewer isn't in charge of decorations," David tells them.

They frown at him, and there's a set to their mouth that seems familiar to David. He's moments from asking Tasha if she knows how to make a macchiato when the other student raises their hand and their voice across the floor. 

"Mr. Brewer! Can I ask you something?"

Spinning around, David has to search to find Patrick, standing at the top of a step ladder and hanging their banner below the scoreboard. It's been hours since they arrived to setup, since David had to turn his attention to his students and make sure they were ready for the judgey parents to arrive, wallets as stingy as their faces. 

But then there's his husband, new jeans crisply creased down the front and making Patrick's legs look longer than David knows they are. His husband, striding across the gymnasium, with a hungry look on his face, the kind David never lets himself want when they're here in this space. 

He reaches his hand out because Patrick's is there waiting, and David loves the way their bodies slot together so easily, familiar with each other's curves. 

"Hi, honey," David says as Patrick's lips meet his own in an easy kiss.

"Oh my god, Mr. Brewer! Mr. Rose is your boyfriend?!?" Tasha has her hands clasped in front of her chest, and when David turns at the high pitched squeal, she's bouncing on her toes. A rush of noise builds in his ears when David and Patrick both realise at the same moment that the whole gymnasium is staring at their public display of affection.

"Actually, Tasha," Patrick says. "He's my husband."

David doesn't have the time to chastise him, not when he's just barely holding fast to Patrick's hand as the crowd of students push into their space, eager for details, for congratulations, for smug declarations that they knew all along, of course. He doesn't even have time to enjoy the release of tension--his students finally know!--because the front doors are propped open and a chill fills the gym, followed by the group of early bird parents and grandparents waiting in the parking lot.

"You owe me" is what David says instead of "I love you," but Patrick understands all the same. They have to let go to get back to work. David is pulled away by Theresa who wants a second opinion on pricing her canvases, and Patrick left the banner half hanging from the rafters. 

"Cole?" Patrick points to the other kid behind the coffee bar. "Make my husband a caramel machiatto, would you?" As he's walking away, David hears him add, "And put that llama back on display. It's Christmas!"

Even over the sounds of his students asking for help, Jocelyn welcoming the parents, and the coffee machines hissing, David can hear his husband singing, "Fa la la la la, la la la la."


End file.
